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Elon & Twitter
- Thread starter Buckminster
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willow_hiller
Well-Known Member
His account is already restricted. It's against the Terms of Service to impersonate someone else with a verified account.
The misinformation is already out there, damage is done.
ElectricIAC
Good-Natured Rascal
Everything Tesla does is in beta, you were expecting different?
willow_hiller
Well-Known Member
If you read through the replies, there are like 2 people confused it's actually Elon. And that particular misinformation isn't new. If those people are that easily fooled, they probably already believed the lies before this guy's stunt.
sleepydoc
Well-Known Member
Including the leadership!
But you forget that Elon was massively wrong about EVs. Multiple times. He knew absolutely NOTHING about rockets, much less reusable ones. He didn't even know how much one cost.
EM's modus operandi has always been break things, apply first principles and see what happens. The question is does he figure out how to move forward with a better plan? Up until now, he has a pretty good track record of pivoting to the right place. Without it, Tesla and SpaceX would not exist.
Your analogy regarding MJ and the final sentence.... completely random and means nothing. And you could have applied the same sophistry to Tesla and SpaceX after EM moved on from Paypal. Even more so after Tesla became a dumpster fire of its own during its Roadster launch days.
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I’m going to go with - “this is a baseless accusation that Elon shouldn’t engage with” since it is the most probable outcome at this point.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
The guy is crypto bro targeted by a crypto scam where someone impersonates a Twitter employee. That's my bet.
Elon's been posting responses like this for months to any allegations against Twitter, he probably just forgot that he owns it now.
BitJam
Active Member
You make some fair points which echo another thing I've been saying: I hope this turns out to be a positive learning experience for Elon. The crux of the matter is whether he will learn enough, fast enough or not.
I watched his Ron Baron interview last night and for the first time I was disheartened rather than inspired by a Musk interview due of this learning issue or more precisely, the lack thereof. I want Elon to succeed! I want him to revolutionize social media in a good way. We all know it needs it. Simply put, the fundamental problem with social media is platforms are incentivized to to create controversy instead of provide solid information. They amplify the worst in us.
Musk learning/not learning about social media seems fundamentally different from him mastering a technical subject. He is doubling down on his mistakes and seems to be entrenched in a information silo, partially created by people blindly echoing his mistakes.
Anders Puck Nielsen (a Dane) asked Jake Broe about Elon's Ukraine tweets. Jake said not to worry, Elon took a page out of Trump's playbook and intentionally creates outrage in order to garner free publicity. This explains a lot! It explains why even as Chief Twit he continues to stir up controversy: by pushing hateful conspiracy theories, by talking about using Twitter to "own the libs", by linking himself to Trump and Kanye, and so on. These "own the libs" controversies coming from the CEO, of course, drive people and advertisers away from Twitter.
Early on, Musk said one of his primary purposes for buying Twitter was to promote absolute free speech. This was worrisome because he seemed to be totally ignorant of places like 4chan and 8kun (and others stretching back decades) where absolute free speech was tried and found wanting, turning the places into cesspools that make Twitter look like a Garden of Eden by comparison.
Elon doubled down on his total ignorance about free speech by falsely claiming that advertiser boycotts (boycotting advertisers based on where they place their ads) when used against Twitter are anti-free-speech. I've tried to argue this rationally with people here but they blindly parrot the Elon party line regardless of how little sense it makes and refuse to answer simple questions about their position.
This gets us to the third issue about Elon not learning: political information silos and echo chambers. For Elon to truly learn in a way that will help Twitter thrive he will have to abandoned some/many of the views that led him to make such controversial tweets. But the only movement I've seen is for him to become more deeply entrenched in them seeing the world as black/white, right/wrong, for-me/against-me. Sure, some idiotic attacks on Elon from the Dems (instigated by the corrupt UAW) have helped fuel his polarized (and polarizing) view of the world but that doesn't let Elon off the hook of needing to learn even though the attacks make his learning more difficult.
I felt discouraged after seeing the Baron interview because it showed how deep an information silo/echo chamber Elon has created for himself. For the first time since I unofficially joined the Elon Musk fan club, I feel embarrassed to be a member. Driving a Tesla and being seen driving a Tesla now, for the first time, create mixed feelings. I no longer have a counter when a relative says "we love Tesla but we hate Elon".
I hope he learns! I hope he succeeds! But so far I see no signs of it. I only see doubling down. His post asking about how YouTube monetization works exemplifies the problem. Nine months and $44B down the road seems rather late to start such fundamental learning. If he had waited that long before learning fundamentals in his other endeavors, there is no doubt they would have failed. If you have hopeful signs of Musk learning (instead of entrenching) in the social media arena, please share them! I would love to be uplifted today.
The reason social media companies are set up to reward people who create controversy and spread conspiracy theories is that this is what boosts engagement and makes them the most money.
He’s out of his league on this one.
But in the long run it won’t hurt him. How many of his former employees have deleted their Twitter accounts? What about those who hold different political views?
These people bitch and complain but will remain on Twitter and pay the $8. They crave the attention and their handlers will not let them leave. Musk knows this.
But in the long run it won’t hurt him. How many of his former employees have deleted their Twitter accounts? What about those who hold different political views?
These people bitch and complain but will remain on Twitter and pay the $8. They crave the attention and their handlers will not let them leave. Musk knows this.
ZenRockGarden
Active Member
Can we argue that under free-speech-absolutism, it should be perfectly ok to impersonate people unless it involves an actual crime?
And as usual, I will point out I DONT favor impersonation, since I'm not a free speech absolutist. But Elon is....
Yep, impersonating people is fine under free speech laws as long as it doesn't involve actual crimes. Impersonating someone for monetary gain, for example, is probably some sort of financial crime, but just claiming that you're a famous person when you're really not that person without soliciting money or anything else isn't against the law.
ElectricIAC
Good-Natured Rascal
That’s too many for it to be an accident, it’s clearly being coordinated or at least disseminated somewhere to push some kind of “point”.
Elon is well within his rights to suspend these accounts or disallow renaming to his handle just like Dorsey, Parag or Gadde would have.
Nice thread that highlights Twitter's potential. WTF have they been doing with the R&D spending? Sorry if already posted.
All Elon needs to do is to shut-up for at least six months and allow for his changes to take effect without the continual self-sabotage.
Ironic that the best way for Elon to save Twitter might be for Elon to stop using Twitter.
All Elon needs to do is to shut-up for at least six months and allow for his changes to take effect without the continual self-sabotage.
Ironic that the best way for Elon to save Twitter might be for Elon to stop using Twitter.
I don't think it's coordinated. It's just one person who did it and it inspires copycats. But each copycat thinks he/she can put a twist on it and one up the last one to make the joke funnier.
Would be interesting to see the graph of total R&D spend. High % spend can mean either high overall spend or low sales or both.
willow_hiller
Well-Known Member
Clearly marked parody is good. But when verification is a confirmation of identity, using it to impersonate without marking it as satire is identity theft. And then on top of that, making false and defamatory statements is liable.
There's no such thing as absolute free speech. The limit is where it infringes upon the fundamental rights of others.
Defamation sure. Opening financial accounts, definitely. But impersonating someone and just making fart jokes is not a crime: Penal Code 529 PC – “False Impersonation” - California Law
In order for this to be a crime, the impersonator must do something that exposes the impersonated individual to civil or criminal liability or gain some benefit (money, not getting arrested, etc.) from the impersonation. And "entertainment" is a commonly used defense against impersonation charges:
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